If anyone is after an AI Amazon UK have a good deal on the above at the moment. On sale at Ā£66.
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These are great interfaces, comparable with some that cost 10x the price. Definitely recommended by me!
Cheers,
Keith
I own several pieces of Behringer gear and none of it has been bad. Just the opposite, the value for money is phenomenal!
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Another plus one here for Behringer AIs. Had a few over the years. both UMC AIs and Xenyx mixers, all solid and reliable. Great value compared some of the more hyped brands.
So I have bought one of these which has arrived today and has been unpacked. I have the connected AI via usb to my pc and also connected the guitar into āinput 2ā and the headphones into the headphones socket. I can see that there is power (as the light is on) and the headphones volume is up but Iām getting no sound from the guitar into the headphones.
Iām guessing that I must be doing something wrong but the Quick Start Guide is not very helpful. Any ideas?
Also how do I connect my amp up to the AI so that I can get some of the effects and how do I record on my pc. I have Audacity on my pc but setting this recording doesnāt record anything. Again I must be doing something wrong here.
I thought that this would be plug and play but obviously not. 
You have done the plugging, now you are doing the playing 
Looking at the controls, if you have your guitar connected directly to input 2, then you need to set the appropriate input level button to āInstā. This is the one I have highlighted below. It needs to be pressed so in for āInstā setting:
Then you need to make sure the Direct monitor (button 5) is engaged. Then the sound of your guitar should be coming through the headphones.
Then the Gain 2 and Phones knobs should be carefully adjusted upwards: carefully so that you donāt blast your ears.
Thatās a starting point. Note that, in this case, you are hearing the ādryā sound of the guitar.
Cheers,
Keith
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So, to do this, instead of connecting the guitar directly to the UMC202HD, connect the amp to it. You do this with an instrument cable from the ampās āRECORDING OUTā jack (see highlighted image below) to one of the inputs:
In this case you want the appropriate input level button OUT for LINE. So if you plug the amp into input 2, you will need to make sure the button I highlighted above is OUT.
Then, if you plug the guitar into the amp and set the amp levels, you should be able to hear on the headphones plugged into the UMC202HD. In this case you should be hearing the sound of the amp, including any of the effects on the amp you have engaged.
This will be using ādirect monitoringā meaning the audio you hear is not going via the PC. This means there will be no latency.
Once you have this working, if you run Audacity, it should be possible to set the Audacity input to the UMC202HD input, and this should then allow recording. If you then play back the recording, you should hear it in the headphones, as long as the audacity output is set to the UMC202HD.
Cheers,
Keith
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Keith @Majik thanks you very much with that which is now working although Iāve had to turn the gain knob to 0 and the headphones right down as I get a continual hum in the background if not. This makes a lot more sense to the Quick Start Guide.
Not tried recording with Audacity yet.
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The hum sound like you might have a ground loop.
If itās a laptop computer, try disconnecting the power and running it on battery and see if that gets rid of the hum.
If itās a desktop PC, try making sure the amp and PC are connected to the same power strip, if you are using power strips.
Cheers,
Keith
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At the moment the two are in separate power supplies. One in the wall socket and the other from an extension lead.
Having now got Audacity working the hum shows up on the recording before I even play anything. A bit odd really.
Now that I have the Behringer connected up and just about working I have a couple of early observations:
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There is no ON/OFF switch so having to take the power cable out the back when not using.
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The signal into Audacity seems to be single channel mono and not stereo, so is in one ear on playback.
Thatās common. They are designed to be always on when your PC is.
It is normally expected that your speakers (if you have them) are connected to your audio interface so all sound goes through the AI.
Yes, guitar signals are mono. Each of the inputs on the AI are a single channel. If you want to record a stereo source, you need to use both of them, but most sources (guitars, mics, etc) are a single channel.
Now, this doesnāt mean it only has to play back in one ear.
One of the main functions of DAWs is to mix mono audio tracks into a stereo output. On a full DAW, itās normal for each track to have a stereo output with a panner control which, by default, is in the middle. You can then use this panner control to move that track to the left or right speaker. This, for example, is the panner in Ardour:
Iām not sure how you do this in Audacity. Audacity isnāt really a full DAW and, because it started out as an audio editor, rather than a DAW, it has a rather clunky workflow (IME) compared to a DAW. Iām sure itās possible to get mono sources centrally panned, but I donāt know how.
Iām sure someone who knows Audacity better than I do will give a more useful answer.
Cheers,
Keith
I just installed Audacity and had a quick look and it appears there is a panner on each track, which is good:
By default, this is centre panned so the audio should come out both speakers.
However, this is a mono track. I suspect you may have configured Audacity to record a stereo track, in which case only one side of the stereo track will have audio in it (because itās a mono source).
Try re-recording but set the track to be mono, and make sure you have the correct input selected.
Cheers,
Keith
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One thing I have just learned: the UMC202HD only does stereo direct recording.
This means, when doing direct, zero-latency monitoring, as you are playing the guitar you will only hear it in one ear or the other (depending on which channel you have the guitar or amp plugged into).
The UMC204HD has a stereo/mono switch to avoid this, but the UMC202HD doesnāt.
On playback, providing you have Audacity set up properly, you should hear it in both ears.
Cheers,
Keith
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Thanks. I did have it recording in stereo to start with but using mono has sorted that.
OK. Thatās a bit off putting I have to say and not what I was expecting. Was expecting to hear the sound in the middle of my head and not to the right. Perhaps I should have gone for the UMC202HD if I had known it would do that but too late now!
One other issue I have is that if I want to play over a backing track played in Foobar I canāt as setting Audacity recording stops the sound from Foobar coming though. Not sure what to set so that I can hear/record the BT and guitar.
The other option is to monitor via the PC. You will get a bit of latency with this but, it can be configured to make it quite low and not noticeable.
For Audacity, apparently, you need to configure Audible Input Monitoring:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/recording_preferences.html
Cheers,
Keith
Not sure here as I donāt really use either Audacity or Windows unless I really have toā¦
My guess is that, like a lot of other applications designed for audio work, Audacity takes over exclusive control of the audio interface on Windows. Thereās good reasons for this (allowing multiple applications to use the AI increases latency and decreases quality) but itās inconvenient.
My suggestion is to load the backing track directly into Audacity. You should be able to do this by dragging and dropping the MP3 (or whatever) into Audacity and it should import it as a separate stereo track. You should then be able to record into another track whilst the backing tracks plays.
Cheers,
Keith
Keith. That works, thanks. Just need to work out how to get the input from the guitar louder as it barely registers in the waveform.
I know that you have mention Ardour as a DAW, and itās free. How easy is this to use or will it be too big a program for me if I just recording my practice for playback?
I suspect a full DAW may be too much.
DAWs are, by nature, complex beasts with loads of options and a lot of those are often exposed on the user interface, which can be overwhelming to new users.
They are like this because they are productivity tools and they prioritise workflow and efficiency over ābeing intuitiveā (although people tend to mistake āunfamiliarā with āunintuitiveā.
The analogy I would use is between a simple painting app like Microsoft Paint compared to a full blown pixel-pushing editor like Photoshop. If all you want to do is simple edits like cropping, Photoshop is probably too much to learn, unless you already know it.
I should point out I donāt dislike Audacity; I think itās a marvelous application. I just find it clunky to use (āunintuitiveā or āunfamiliarā?) because Iām more use to a full DAW capabilities and workflow.
If you are interested in exploring a DAW option, I can suggest a couple of āquick startā videos.
Note that Ardour, whilst open-source and āfreeā (in multiple definitions of that word) the Windows distribution is not free of charge. But it is very cheap.
But you can download a demo version for free if you want to explore it.
Cheers,
Keith